World's End
by Fayalargo Winterwoelfin
Summary: In a way, it was like Gin. So close you feel you can touch it if you dare, but so far away you can’t even reach it in your dreams. Ch.4: MatsuGin up. A series of loosely connected oneshots around World's End. Ch.1 MatsuGin, Ch.2 HitsuYachi, Ch.3: Unohana
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach

**A/N:** This story was a christmas present for my bestest friend who here in resides under the beautiful name of Serania a'Vienje. She's been my friend and supporter for ages (yeah, we're_ that_ old!) so I wanted to give her something special, and because she likes the Rangiku/Gin pairing I started writing that. The only problem was that the story got a will of its own, so it's only one shot Rangiku/Gin, and two others that sprang into my mind. I will probably end these one-shot series with another Rangiku/Gin and she'll get it for ...Easter, or whatever holiday comes next. :-)  
And my thanks go to Elithil for betaing this story and taking creative freedom with the word 'deadline'. :-)

Enjoy reading! It starts off between the known good-bye (or whatever) scene between Gin and Rangiku, but that's not the whole chapter

_

* * *

_

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising

_I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing._

_To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:_

_Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!_

_(Lord of the Rings, Eomer's Song)_

_---_

**Chapter 1, Prologue, "At World's End We Meet Again" (RagikuxGin)**

**---**

Rangiku appeared behind him, her arm over his shoulder, her sword at his throat.

"Don't move."

For a moment, he tensed, his closed eyes narrowed dangerously.

Her breath hitched, and she couldn't decide what she would do if he turned on her.

Then suddenly the strain oozed out of him and he relaxed in his usual flippant self.

"I'm sorry, Aizen-taichou," he chirped innocently. "I went an' got caught."

Outwardly, she was on edge, ready to kill. And there was a part of her that even _wanted_ to kill him.

The part of her that was true to her oaths as a shinigami and to her captain.

She, at least, was emotionally strong enough to oppose him.

Inwardly, she strangely was almost tranquil, and she felt her reiatsu slowly interweaving with Gins. They stood, twined in a deadly embrace, she her sword at his throat, but he could kill her with a twitch of his hand.

The instant when she had stopped his attack on Hinamori, his sword had spanned the distance between them. A soft touching of souls, in this moment intimate like a soft kiss. Through their swords for this unbelievably short amount of time, they had bridged the abyss that had grown wider each passing day.

A kiss of farewell.

He had known that it was going to end soon, because then the sky opened and spindly hands reached through, Pinocchio noses protruded from white masks.

Just the endless minute before, she had felt Gin's reiatsu in a contented, almost relaxed state, so very unlike the usual restlessness and recklessness that defined it, that she almost suspected that he had enjoyed their closeness. Only when the Menos' appeared dread tensed the harmonic flow of his spirit. He knew what was to come. For a short, unbelievable moment, she felt him wavering. Felt a tremor deep down in his soul, reaching towards her.

But it couldn't breach the walls erected around the cores of their souls. The lifetime of choices they had had to make to secure their innermost feelings. The choices that had piled layer upon layer of stone to protect their love for each other. Now they stood between them.

She felt desperation mounting in her, but when the negacion-light cut between them, she could only let go of him.

A sharp pain, when their connection was severed and she was thrown back into the real her. Tears stung in her eyes, as she desperately stared at his back. Again.

"I'm a lil' bit disappointed. I could've been held a little longer."

Her brow narrowed as she stared at him.

_Why?_

And the suppressed trembling of his shoulders, the desperate stiffness of his back.

Why did she see only now? What always watching his back should have told her before.

_Why can I never hold him back?_

Tears threatened to spill in her eyes.

"So long, Rangiku."

He turned around to her, his face caught in a small sad smile.

"Sorry."

Deep down in her, she knew they were the same. And they had made their choices a long time ago.

To protect their love, they had chosen different people they could die for. People who were stronger than them, people, who guided them, helped them not to lose themselves in what seemed to be a hopeless love.

As his form slowly faded away in the Negacion light, desperately biting her lips was all she could do from calling out, _Where are you going, Gin? _

For a fleeting moment, she even thought about following him.

But then, can a cat run after anything other than her prey?

_If I were stronger, could I catch him?_

Her thoughts reeled and her stomach responded. What had she done wrong? How could he turn out a traitor? She had suspected, of course, but only now she realised that deep down in her, she had always been convinced of his innocence. He was a neglecting bastard, not worthy of any affection, cold and abrasive, but in his own way he had always taken care of her.

"_I'm a lil' bit disappointed. I could've been held a little longer."_

What did he mean? Did he really mean to tell her that he cared? But then, why all of a sudden? He had had centuries in which he had let her suffer from her loneliness, prolonged only by the scraps of attention he had sometimes decided to throw at her, to sustain her through another long period of drought. It had taken so long for her to convince herself that he didn't care anymore, he hadn't shown himself to her in years. That she could let go of him that it had all been only a cruel game she could get over fairly quickly.

But only… his farewell had caught her unawares. In his few words, he had suddenly told her that he cared - if she didn't read it completely the wrong way. But why else bother? And why bother only now, when he was leaving.

_Gin!_ She cried in her mind and her stomach clenched.

She held her breath, trying to get him out of her head and heart. She didn't succeed, naturally, but as she cleared her mind a bit, another thought entered.

She all too clearly remembered Isane's voice through the hellmoth. "Hitsugaya-taichou challenged the traitor Aizen, but lost, and is now under emergency treatment by Unohana-taichou."

The chilling thought of her captain on the verge of dying gripped her heart with a hand of ice. For a moment, she really could forget Gin. He couldn't matter.

It was her captain who needed her immediate help and support.

She suddenly knew again where she belonged.

She loved Gin, but it was her captain she would follow to World's End. Always.

There had never really been any choice.

Gin had followed Aizen to cause World's End.

As she sat at her captain's bed in the Fourth Division emergency building, she felt a sob build in her throat at the sight of his face so pale that the edge where skin ended and hair begun was barely discernible.

She tried to overlook the fact that Gin was jointly responsible for her captain's state of coma. Which was an impossible feat, since his betrayal was so blatantly obvious. She had always known that Gin was different, maybe a tad more cruel than the average person, but she had believed that at least they had shared a belief of what being a shinigami in soul-society meant, was supposed to mean.

She bent her head down and silently cried into the white sheet of her captain's bed.

And even when she felt his warm presence so near, her thoughts strayed to the other man that meant something in her life. The man who had gotten hurt, the man who had hurt. Both of them. If only she had been a little stronger, could she have prevented it from happening? The life-threatening wound, the treason? What if she had been stronger, and could have literally _held_ Gin back? Would it have been possible? Could she have made him stay?

Would she have had to worry if that waxen figure in front of her would ever wake up, if she had been stronger and defeated Kira quicker?

World's end, truly.

She would not be anywhere else than she was now, it was who she was and where she belonged. But that didn't stop her from being so terribly lonely.

She helplessly started to giggle through her tears into the soft sheet.

Because for some reason the thought made her ironically happy and she almost wished for the world to end.

Because then she would meet Gin again.

* * *

**A/N: **Reviews make Gin smile... ;-) 


	2. World's end, my ass

**Chapter 2, ****YachiruxHitsugaya, ****2 years later**

* * *

_A soul grows when in need.

* * *

**A/N**: This chapter takes place two years after the soul-society arc. Aizen's abandoning of soul society has evolved into a terrible war of Shinigami against Arrancar. _

_A soul grows when in need_. When Urahara made Ichigo a Shinigami after Rukia's powers were taken away from him, he had to fight against Ururu, because 'under life-threatening conditions a soul regains its strength most quickly'. Following this logic and considering the impact a war would have on the Shinigami of soul society, I think that most of them have grown much more than in the previous (fifty) more or less peaceful years. So I think it's pretty reasonable that all of the vice-captains have reached bankai for example, simply because they needed it.

So Yachiru and Hitsugaya are looking to be between fourteen and seventeen years in this fic. Considering the possibily of the vast growth a soul can undergo in stress situations I not only think it possible but probable that they change that much in such a short time, since I believe that their physic simply is a reflection of the maturity of their souls.

Enjoy reading!

* * *

"Shiro?" A young woman with a healing scar in an angry red from her left temple down her neck approached the young man who intently stared into the darkened cell where the silent form of a woman in a white gown lay on a simple bed. 

At her voice he straightened his shoulders under his white coat, resuming his usual self-confident stance, so as not to show a weakness in front of her.

"It's nothing," he said harshly to paper over the hoarseness in his voice, not even glancing at her as she appeared beside him.

She angrily stared past him.

"She tried to talk to you again?"

When he didn't answer, she looked at him sharply.

"Did she?"

He hung his head slightly to the side, his brow and mouth twisted in pain.

"Yes," he murmured, "I don't understand how she can still…" he finally looked at her, and even though his eyes were icy, she saw the helplessness he admitted in this small gesture of his – probably she and Matsumoto and Unohana were the only ones allowed to see, "it's already been two years since we're fighting an open war against Aizen," he continued, "and she still…" his fist tightened, the air around him grew a few degrees colder and he trailed off, unable to voice the words.

She had no such qualms, "She still wants you to _save_ Aizen." Her voice was rough, and a hot cloud of anger surrounded her.

"One of these days, I'll kill you," she growled at the tranquilized figure in the room.

Toushiro blinked, unable to interpret what exactly she tried to accomplish by saying these things in his presence.

His contemplation was interrupted as she commanded, "Come on, we leave!"

He stood petrified for a moment, because even though they had spent a lot of time in each others company the passing year of war, he _still_ was irked by the fact that she dared to order him around, a shinigami clearly her superior. And she was even smaller than him! He corrected that notion, when he remembered that he wasn't exactly small anymore… and neither was she. (But he was taller, of course.)

Before he finished his thought, she was already at the end of the corridor in that disconcerting speed of hers. He wasn't her superior in _that_, he supposed.

"What are you waiting for, Shiro?!" she called back at him, half serious, half teasing, her pink sleeveless coat printed with red flowers and blood-stained swords billowing around her. "We have Arrancar to kill!"

And then she was gone.

He maybe should have gotten used to her ways by now.

He frowned as he looked after her and he tried to evaluate what her visit and her words had meant. Did she really try to _take care_ of him? If she had been a man he would have said that her behaviour bordered on …protective. Half a smile crept on his face as he pondered that it probably had been. He wouldn't put it beside her.

He was kind of used to it from his Vice-Captain, but Yachiru had such a different way to show it, bordering on innocent as well as on aggressive, while Matsumoto was definitely more sly and persuasive.

In the end he supposed, it was nice of them to care about him, but it was not that he needed it.

It was on his shoulders where the responsibility to protect should be placed.

It was then that he turned back to the darkened room, his eyes roaming over the still form of his childhood friend, who also always had thought she had to take care of him.

The sadness in his eyes grew, as he pondered the past, "I'm sorry Hinamori," he murmured to her in a low voice, "you know I would have done anything to help you, to protect for you what you couldn't protect, but," even though it hurt, he refused to give in to his pain and let his gaze stray from her. He had taken so long to finally reach this decision, but he knew he had to, because there were other people than Hinamori he too had to protect, "but…saving Aizen…" he _didn't_ look away, he owed it to her, "is not something I could ever do."

Before he turned to go, he finally cast his eyes down and whispered, "Goodbye for now. Until this war ends, I'll not come again."

…

Outside of the Fourth Division Buildings he caught up to Yachiru. Or, he suspected, that she might have waited for him.

"Kill her?" he asked, a stern, irritated frown on his face, voicing the question that had been bothering him, "I believe you are overreacting."

"Ken – chan always says that if something moves and you don't like it, kill it." She sounded a bit too happy for his liking.

He frowned irritatedly, but with an ironic note that told him, that, as usual, he began cheering up in her presence. "That's your answer to everything."

She cast a dazzling smile at him that made cute dimples into her roundish cheeks, but made the healing scar just the more pronounced.

Seeing it always gave him a pang of regret and, foremost, guilt.

He stopped, keeping outright dismay from showing in his posture and demeanour.

She stood too, and turned with an innocent, questioning gaze towards him.

His hand automatically rose and reached for her face, but then hesitated. It hovered several centimetres over her skin.

She had eyed his movement intently, but when he stopped, she grinned a bit quizzically. Her gaze declared his hesitation ridiculous, so he finally rested his fingers in a tender touch on her cheek. Her reiatsu was warm, especially compared to his. With his fingertips he felt the skin near the scar brittle and overstretched. He detected small amounts of spirit power leaking out of the still healing wound, even after all this time, and it made his inability all the more scathing. His gaze cast down, he murmured, "I'm sorry. I should have come earlier." He knew that scar marred much more of her body than her face. He had seen her clothes ripped open and blood oozing out from a gash that went down to her hip. Casting a sheet of ice over it to stop the bleeding had been all he had been able to do for her, coming too late to catch more than a glimpse of the enemy.

"I can very well take care of myself!" she answered pertly, patting his head in a patronizing gesture. "Anyway, I'm proud of myself. It was Tousen I was fighting!"

When he smoothed his violated hair back into spikes with his free hand, he felt, under the fingers still resting on her cheek, her reiatsu beginning to move in a dawning temper.

Her eyes were of the colour of rusty blood trying to come alive again. She narrowed them until they were barely slits and a broad, thin-lipped, cruel grin stretched the scar tissue. For a moment he wondered if she wasn't Kenpachi's real daughter, her expression resembled his so much.

"Next time I'll teach that hypocrite what 'bloodshed' really means! 'Path of least bloodshed!' he makes me laugh!"

Although, she was a master at containing her reiatsu, he felt it intensify under his fingertips, a hot pain in his skin. He started to feel it all around her, engulfing even him. Bloodlust, pure bloodlust. Contrary to Kenpachi, it seemed terribly out of place with her rather cute appearance.

"You are a devil," he said, his eyes widening, as her furious red reiatsu pressed down on him.

"I take that as a compliment," she said cockily, the blaze receding to a warm flare as her thoughts wavered from her revenge on Tousen back to him again.

She tilted her head thoughtfully for a moment, gazing at him with a sly look. He answered her grinning gaze with a cool one of his, a bit disconcerted at her blatant gauging of him, yet determined not to let it show. Even if he had to send cooling reiatsu to his cheeks. He would die before anyone saw him blushing.

"We should go to the captain's meeting," he said, trying to divert her attention towards duty, like he always did, when she made him feel like that. And every time his control slid a bit more out of his grasp.

But suddenly he was thrown terribly off balance when he felt her burning reiatsu on his lips, as she gave him a peck, quickly and surprisingly.

"Yes, we should go."

She turned to go, complacently grinning at his gulled mien, a light bouncing in her steps. She would have him, she knew it. Because she got everything she wanted.

But even thinking this, she wasn't prepared when her flash-step towards her division's headquarters to collect her captain, was impeded by a sudden gush of blue, ice cold reiatsu, obstructing the path in front of her. She stopped, blinking in surprise, feeling the eyes of the dragon that was Shiro's soul slayer on her, seizing her up as if she were his prey, or… his treasure.

A sudden grin sprang on her astounded face, and of course she let it happen, when from behind she felt a familiar hand gripping her upper arm, and turning her around.

_You can't go, _the dragon whispered in her ear, the sound reverberating in her soul.

This made her face him fully and the cold wave emanating from him. There were some words in other people's vocabulary, that, after her opinion should simply be eradicated from the colloquial linguistic memory. 'Can't' being one of them.

Toushiro's eyes were a dark swirling blue and she felt the possessiveness of the dragon inside him, wanting her, here, now.

_You're mine._

And there were some words that simply riled her up.

"So, am I?" She faced his approaching determination with an arrogant grin, narrowing her eyes. She felt the power channelling through her form. In a flash the swirling red reiatsu billowed around her, heating up the air in the vicinity. The slit eyes of a demonic fox took form above her, blatantly challenging the ice-blue dragon.

Little fingers of lightning chirped at the edge where their different reiatsu met. _Let's see who possesses whom._

Too bad for him that she never lost.

She parted her lips in a passionate snarl and charged at him.

As they burned cold and hot in a violent kiss, their reiatsu clashed around them in a cascade of colours.

…

Grinning, she smoothened her pale pink hair and put a few of the short strands behind her ears.

He watched her darkly, his pale lips parted, slightly out of breath.

A hellmoth had interrupted and they had been informed that Aizen's army had finally started marching towards Soul Society.

She pinched him playfully in his pointed nose, still a bit child-like in his otherwise mostly sharp and manly face. She grinned at his annoyed expression.

"Stop always being so serious!"

"Come what may," he declared, "I'll protect you." He gazed at her with deep, sincere eyes, "Even if the world should end, I will…"

She almost looked thoughtful, before she interrupted him happily, "…I'll be there, first row!" She gave him another kiss, and continued in cheerful disregard of his worries, "World's end, my ass! I'll _laugh_!"

* * *

**A/N: **Opinions of any kind are welcome. :-) 

Or

Reviews make Yachiru laugh (happily).

**

* * *

**


	3. For them the world ends

**Chapter 3, "Illusions" or "Eventually Aizen has to die"**

--

A ring of fire enclosed Aizen's throne on which he was languorously sitting. He watched his opponent, bearing no notice to the flames surrounding him. Cockily his chin rested on the long elegant fingers of his right hand, with the left he flapped lazily at the fire, as if it were a not very bothersome fly.

"Welcome to my kingdom, Genryusai-_dono._"

"Your kingdom?" the old man grated out in his raspy voice. "I don't see you reigning over anything worthwhile." He laughed contemptuously.

"The World will be my kingdom, like Soul Society and Hollowland." Aizen grinned a sly, victorious grin.

"I won't allow that!" The old man decidedly waved his sword a few times and a cascade of fire shot towards Aizen.

"What makes you so sure that you will succeed?" The fire dissolved a metre away from Aizen, not singeing even one lock of hair. "Look at them," he cast a meaningful glance outside of the ring of fire, curtaining it open with his gaze alone, to give a free view of the two unmoving bodies of Yamamoto's best students.

The commander narrowed his eyes and growled, "That is exactly why I will succeed!"

Two shinigami women kneeled beside the bodies and Yamamoto recognised the 4th Division's best healers, captain and vice-captain, Retsu Unohana and Isane Kotetsu. A light blue stream of spirit energy constantly flowed from the healer's hands to the injured captains. The three vice-captains of the two near-dead captains were all the while fighting against intruding Arrancar to protect their commanders.

"They can still be saved, I believe," Aizen sighed theatrically, "Although I might have damaged them permanently. It would be a shame. Next time I shall take better care."

By then, Aizen could almost _see_ the power accumulating in his opponent, see him trembling with fury, and an incredible amount of power was channelled in his body.

"There will be no next time!" The commander threw his heavy, naked arms to the side unleashing power in all direction. "Ban-"his strong fists shot inward and met in a bone shattering smash in front of him. "-kai!" A thunderous bang resounded and black smoke shot up around him, followed by an eruption of red, smouldering chunks of lava flying towards Aizen.

Finally loocking a bit alert, he threw up a black shield between them, absorbing the charring, fluid stone.

Yamamoto stood there, panting heavily, his black eyes glowing a dangerous orange red. Aizen seemed to be sweating now too, and some strands of his hair had escaped his impeccable hairstyle.

"Look, Unohana-taichou seems already finished." Aizen grinned towards the outside, where Isane kneeled, one hand over each body, her bankai of multiple helpers around them, healing alongside her. The older healer stood unmoved, looking towards Aizen and Yamamoto. "From here, her hair almost looks like your beard, just in black." He laughed unpleasantly.

Yamamoto said nothing, but a low resonating rumbling seemed to surround him and under the ring of fire the soil turned into lava. Red, viscous fluid, bubbling dangerously. And it started crawling towards Aizen, undeflectable. He suddenly sat upright, and hastily murmured a mighty spell to fend it off. Thirty centimetres from him a black wall appeared, of spirit particles so dense that not even the lava seemed to be able to penetrate them. But the effort was now visible on his face.

"Those two were young, Aizen, and still full of illusions, easy to cheat," Yamamoto coughed with effort, but his words were strong and sure. "You won't find it that easy with me."

Aizen narrowed his eyes and hissed a few words. A cloud of mist glittering silver in the firelight wafted from him towards Yamamoto and swallowed the commander up, obscuring his form. After a short time, a pained growl of Yamamoto's came from the cloud. Aizen laughed, a mean sound. "You may be old, but you are still full of idealistic illusions. How do you want to stand against me?"

When suddenly Yamamoto's cry resounded from inside the mist, a gentle voice, quiet but carrying, said, "Please."

With an eyebrow coolly drawn up, Aizen turned to the woman who was approaching the fire sedately.

"And what would your purpose here be?" Aizen derisively asked, "I haven't even started harming him yet."

"Please stop it," her voice was soft and her sad gaze didn't waver as she unflinchingly strode on towards Aizen. She didn't even seem to notice the ring of fire as she passed through it and through the thick, violent reiatsu surrounding Aizen and Yamamoto, as easily as a crow passing through fog.

"And why exactly would I do that?" Aizen seemed to have resigned himself to torturing Yamamoto with only half his attention, the other was turned with curiosity on the small, sturdy woman in the white captain's coat who looked at him with her big, dark eyes, deep and innocent at the same time.

She spoke in the same gentle tone as she always did, her words elegantly voiced. "Aizen Sousuke, traitor, you have wrought enough havoc. Even you must see that it is time to end." Her soft reproachful inflection sounded as if she were gently admonishing a child.

He chuckled in an almost friendly way. "And I shall be sorry to tell you that as of yet, I do not intend to stop. As I surely told some of you before, my ultimate aim is to take the place of God and be the supreme ruler of the universe. And I shall not refrain from doing so, because of a healer."

He prepared to turn away, but her calm black gaze, seemingly unaffected by the shine of the fire surrounding them and the violence and power in the air around them, held him captive.

"I must insist," she said with politely distanced respectfulness.

He shook free of her eyes, really joggling his body doing so, as if it were a bodily charm. "I won't," he said, now coldly. "And now stand aside, woman! I have some conquering to do." With an impatient backhand he shot the silvery mist at her, expecting to catch her inside it as he had done with Yamamoto. But to his surprise it lost density and shape around her, like a very soft summer wind that passes through the leaves of an oak, in a pleasant whisper.

"What?!"

She met his wild, angry gaze with a worried glance.

He came again at her, this time evidently calling entirely on the powers of his soul-slayer so that the whole surroundings seemed to lose shape and become a howling bottomless abyss, filled with deadly creatures of the otherworld, and sharp spikes ready to pierce any body. He knew that if she started to give in to his master-illusion, she would die, for the dangers projected had the power to be real. And the fear alone should let every normal soul tremble with pain.

The more it unnerved him when she barely seemed to react to his attack. She stopped her slow walk and stood where she was. Her hair tie tore and in the wind of his attack the strands loosened and in long black tresses fanned around her like a halo. But her eyes hadn't changed, hadn't even flinched downward for the breath of a second. They still looked at him and their timeless sadness seemed to suck _him_ in instead of the other way round. Her hair that settled on her back almost went down to her knees.

"How?!" he almost howled, losing control of his perfected image, "How are you able to escape Kyoka Suigetsu?"

"I may not have any illusions left which you can attack," she answered in a cultured tone, her voice unnaturally calm, regret and bitterness tinting her carefully pronounced words that drove him to madness. "It is possible for a person to get lost in his own illusions."

"Ha! You can do nothing to me!" He gathered power for another attack. "I have taken the place of God."

Her dark eyes looked at him pityingly. "I am sorry that I have to be the one to tell you that in fact there is no God." She looked genuinely concerned now. "Many have tried and even more have failed. And all of them have sown destruction in their wake."

"I will be God."

She closed her eyes and her hand reached to the hilt of her soul-slayer.

"What will you do," he fleered, "make your beast eat me?!" He laughed cruelly.

She opened her eyes.

"Minazuki, rise."

The hilt of her sword dissolved and a green mist emerged from the sheath, rising and taking the form of strange beast with two ray-like wings and a long pointed tail.

"My, my. It seems to be smaller than usual," Aizen observed condescendingly.

"I do think that it would be superfluous of me to tell you that one can control the size and form of one's soul-slayer," she remained polite.

"But what do you intend to do now?" Aizen now sounded earnestly curious and he gazed at her soul slayer, fascinated. Even the mist around Yamamoto lightened and his pained cries receded to a harsh and laboured breathing.

"That what I intended to do from the beginning," she said like she was discussing a pleasant, polite topic over afternoon tea. "To defy you. I have seen this end long before I even lost my mortal body."

He frowned, knowing it was highly improbable to remember more than a few scraps of one's former life, especially considering the time Unohana had already spent as a shinigami.

Her gaze grew slightly distant, when she recited words heard long ago, "In blood you will be bound, and in fire you will burn," her gaze focused gently on him again. "Aizen Sousuke, you will perish by the will of those who have suffered through you."

Was it the shine of the fire or his own imagination that made her eyes suddenly glitter black as hell?

Without taking her gaze from a motionless Aizen, she shifted her attention to her soul-slayer.

"Minazuki, release."

A dull call of affirmation rose from the soul-beast. Obediently it moved towards Unohana's form, becoming smaller and smaller as it neared. When it reached her, they merged, two parts of a whole coming back together. It remained visible as a transparent green sheen that lay over her form, the wings shadowing her arms.

Aizen growled deeply and dangerously. "I'll kill you now." He pointed his soul-slayer at the small, composed woman with a murderous intent.

He readied his stance.

"Do you not know how many people you have already killed?" she asked sadly. "Was that really necessary?"

"Everything happens for a reason," he answered, "They were sacrifices for a greater goal."

She closed her eyes in a pained expression and a faint red mist oozed from her and Minazuki's form. "Do you really never consider other people's feelings? That they had lives and great goals of their own?" She looked at him again. If she had been any other person she might have cried, but being who she was, the control she put her grief under intensified her gaze so much that he found himself unable to move.

The red mist waved towards Aizen's still form. As it neared and slowly surrounded him, he felt himself under an assault of emotions which he would have never deemed possible to be contained in one attack. Hate, blood thirst, anguish, pain, but most of all it was the feeling of revenge, single-minded, churning revenge.

For a short moment he wondered what kind of spell Unohana had used and he slashed at it with his soul-slayer. It went through it pretty much without any effect, but when a few of the particles were thrown against his white coat and left red splotches, he suddenly realised that it weren't spirit particles that were attacking him, but droplets of blood.

And they were calling him.

Unohana saw the dawning realisation on his face and nodded. "Yes, it is the blood of those you killed, of all those who were hurt because of you, who come to seek their ultimate and final revenge. You will not escape your fate."

She was sweating by now and Aizen laughed venomously, even though he felt the hate of the blood tugging at his soul.

"You can do nothing to me."

He flash-stepped out of the perimeter of the red mist, dodging around the woman, appearing behind her, his soul-slayer levied ready to strike.

She turned around to face him, but was not quick enough to evade a hit. When his soul-slayer cut into her shoulder, her eyes closed in pain, and she gasped out a short cry. Her head and upper body folding forward. Her hands instinctively used the sharp blade of Aizen's soul-slayer to support herself. She pulled herself upright again, seemingly resistant to the pain of the sword cutting deep paths into her hands and into her shoulder. Blood flowed freely from the deep gash and streamed, an unevenly growing lake on her white captain's coat, running in thin veins down her arm and torso. Where her hands touched the cold metal of the sword, blood ran down her palms until it reached the edge of her hand, where it accumulated before it slowly dropped down.

She laboriously straightened up and raised her head. Her gaze met with Aizen's victorious grin.

She panted, "That was the last mistake you ever made, Aizen Sousuke."

He gasped in horror as one bloody hand let go of his soul-soul slayer and grasped the collar of his coat.

The mist of blood Minazuki had been, and still was, literally sweating suddenly rushed around Aizen, the droplets adding one after one to Unohana's blood, on her body, on Aizen's soul-slayer, on Aizen's coat and his skin.

He tried to tear his soul slayer free of her, but she held him.

"In blood you will be bound."

A panicked expression showed on Aizen's face as the mist of blood, merged and fortified with Unohana's blood suddenly became thicker, and like vines, began moving towards him. The spot of blood on his coat thickened and moved towards his throat, like a hand of shadow trying to throttle him. With a high-pitched shriek, he tore his soul-slayer from the woman's body and her grip.

She had to let it go.

But when he jumped back, he stumbled, just short of falling. With an appalled cry he looked down at his feet. Hands of blood held his ankles, firmly and to the soil.

With wild movements of his sword he slashed at the strings of blood connecting him to Unohana, but he cut through it with no effect. A terrible, beastly cry rose from his throat, and he fervently tried to shake free, releasing his terrible reiatsu to free himself from the bonds confining him. But the blood held onto him, the disgusting red substance gluing with the power of revenge. He felt the hate and the pain sucking away at him.

After a few seconds he found himself covered in blood, bubbling dangerously, flowing into his throat as he howled with helpless rage.

Finally Yamamoto had freed himself from the remnants of Aizen's spell. At Aizen's howl he looked to him and noted with utter devastation Unohana fighting with Aizen. He staggered several steps towards them, just as Aizen's form vanished under a blanket of dangerously glinting red fluid.

Unohana felt him behind her back, she sensed him nearing. With effort she turned around, the blood of her wounds connecting her to Aizen, the strain of the fight visible in every fibre of her body.

"Yamamoto-dono," Her gaze and her voice, although exhaustion and pain resonated, were as always when she addressed him, friendly, patient, but immovable. "You must burn us now." The way she said it almost sounded like a polite plea, but her acquiescent eyes told him that she was serious. He felt that her power was at an end, she couldn't hold Aizen much longer, because he was still fighting.

She wanted him to burn them together, because she could not kill him with the power of her spell alone.

She still looked at him unswervingly, calm despite the pain. She asked him to kill her, to sacrifice her, to burn her and Aizen. To her, it didn't matter anymore, he thought. There had never been any place for regret in her life. But didn't she think of other people? Didn't she know what she meant to him?

She knew, but she asked nevertheless.

He was the most powerful shinigami of all in the whole of Soul Society, but sometimes even for him, there was no other way. It was the most devastating of all thoughts. Because there really wasn't any other way to get rid of Aizen. And to protect the world and Soul Society, Aizen had to die _now_.

Only…

He couldn't bear that it should be him, him of all people who should have to kill her. Who must seal the sacrifice she made. To see her go, in the fire of a pyre. Because she was no phoenix, she wouldn't simply rise from the ashes, there would not be rebirth. Not this time. She had been forced to leave the living world in a pyre, and her soul had come to soul society to seek some peace. But on the first day he interviewed her, when she came into the court of pure souls, an able soul despite her lack of academy training, and he instantly offered her a high-ranking job in the Fourth Division, she had already told him that she knew she was going to die in a pyre, and that, since that probably meant troubles in the future, she would willingly accept to be refused.

She had been a lonely soul all her existence, being able to remember all of her previous life, gifted with foresight beyond her mortal life. He had been smitten with her elegance, her pride, her poise, and her calm acceptance from that first day on, and he had done his best to make her feel at home, to give her hope and a future, but that sad, thoughtful look had never entirely left her face.

And he simply couldn't bear to see her go. He couldn't bear to be the one responsible of letting her go.

He went over to where she and Aizen stood in their terrible embrace.

He couldn't burn them together.

Gently he put his arms around her torso and bent his head down to her shoulders. Tenderly he kissed the unscathed side of her neck and he felt his tears mingling with hers where their cheeks touched. She cried for him and for his terrible decision, but she knew him as he knew her. Imperturbable. The road that had to be taken was the road they would walk.

He closed his eyes and gathered all his reiatsu, calling the fire and the lava from the ring to him, enclosing them, kissing their feet, licking up the garments of their legs.

"BURN."

The word rumbled deep in his chest, through his soul.

The three of them would burn, in a fire that couldn't be put out by a mere water-based soul-slayer. It was their souls that would feed it and he would ensure that it burned all the way, that every spirit particle ever belonging to Aizen was cleansed by that purging flame.

For him and Retsu, the world would end here, too.

Their souls equally consumed by the fire, there would be no existence after.

* * *


	4. Stronger

**A/N: **Matsumoto/Gin. Chronologically before chapter 3.

* * *

Probably, if she hadn't been so restless... 

She tried to relax, meditate, whatever necessary to distract herself from the silent world around her. Not even human souls roamed the streets of Karakura these days. Most probably they too sensed the tingling of the atmosphere, laden with spirit power and unrest. A quiet, unsettling calmness in the air, that belied the intensity of the storm to be released shortly.

The quiet grated on her nerves. She knew from today on, from the time when her shift was over, it was exactly one week until the battle against Aizen. Since both parties hat units sensing approaching spirit power of any kind extremely well, it seemed pointless to plan a surprise attack. Alas the fixed date. Like in old times.

She hadn't been sleeping well lately. Small wonder, when 'World's End' wasn't a concept somewhere in the future any more, but steadily, quickly approaching day by day. She felt that their efforts at protecting Soul Society and the Human World would have needed much more time preparing. But as for the moment, they were as well equipped as they could be. Nothing to do anymore, but to wait. No last minute defences to fix, no new strategies, nothing. What could be done had been done.

She had started dreaming of Gin again. Romantic dreams, where all of this had never happened, sometimes, but most of the time, it was nightmares she dreamed, from the point where he had betrayed Soul Society onwards, and she had yet to see a happy ending.

Even awake, she had started thinking what she would do when she encountered him on the battle field finally. She knew they would meet. They had to. She would probably try to kill him. She had spent the last years strengthening her will to do so. But even now, just thinking about it left her unsure if she could really do it. Go at him with all her might.

For hours she sat on the highest building in Karakura, uselessly watching the night around her, and circling thoughts of insecurity and death in her mind. The wearier she became, the faster her thoughts circled in her head, the edgier she got. Even after her shift she wouldn't be able to fall asleep, she knew that.

So when the change of watch came, she didn't immediately return to Soul Society, but started to walk around nightly Karakura, she passed a playground she liked, thought about sitting there under the trees, but her unrest fuelled her steps and she passed it by without stopping.

She strolled beside the small river of the town. The water glittered, illuminated by a nearly full moon. Somewhere ahead of her was a small group of trees and bushes, a dark spot shaded beneath them. She stopped in the middle of a wide open space and listened to the water gurgling softly. She closed her eyes and let the moonlight bathe her face in its silvery glow. Some of her nervousness faded. Although, she reminded herself, she stood in open view from any side for an enemy to attack. How careless. But there hadn't been a living being out the whole day. Why should it now? The only thing to feel was the strong current of spirit particles connecting Hollow Land and Soul Society through the Human World.

The moonlight felt like balm on her skin. Cool, silvery presence, distant and close at the same time; calming, but tempting. In a way, it was like Gin. So close you feel you can touch it if you dare, but so far away, you can't even reach it in your dreams.

Exhaustion and jumpiness can play tricks on your senses. Imagination does the rest. In the moonlight she thought she felt a whiff of his reiatsu prickling against hers. It was like the very slight breeze you didn't feel but if you looked close enough, saw it in the minute moving of the grass blades in front of you. When you are never sure if it isn't the grass making up things. She opened her eyes, and gazed at the moon, not quite smiling and not yet crying. Like when she thought of Gin.

She tore her gaze away from it and wandered on.

Suddenly she gasped in shock. One of the thin, imperceptible threads of awareness she had always spread around her in case there was something lurking in the shadows caught on a soul in the group of trees twenty flash steps ahead. Instant recognition made her recoil. She hadn't expected anyone out here, and especially not a soul this strong. He kept his spirit power under tight control, but there was no way she could have not recognised him. Her breath hitched and she felt blood drain out of her face. Her body stood rooted to the ground, frozen for a millisecond as an onslaught of emotions hit her. She knew a moment of panic. Fury and resentment at his choices mingled with long accrued longing suddenly breaking out. Then there was the fear of him and his power, and the fear of the awareness that she would have to make choices in an instant – choices she wasn't prepared to make.

"Gin..." the breathless gasp escaped her throat as almost a choke.

She knew he was coming. She didn't know what to do.

"And here was me, wanting to surprise ya." His carelessly joyful voice and his trademark grin that smirked down at her.

With an acrid hiss the sheath released her Soul Slayer. She fixed him with a hard stare over the tip of her sword. Suppressing the urge to calm down and to reach out to him. He was an enemy. "Don't come near." A warning, giving her time to overpower anxiety with anger, to feed fear to fury. Just a slight change of balance that her defensive stance became ready, aggressive.

He stepped closer, his arms spread out with open hands, as if to hug her. Her brain didn't recognize it before her body acted. Instead of hugging her, his throat faced the sharp side of her sword. She embraced him from behind, the blade kissing his throat.

"What do you want here?" She snarled. Her cheek was close to his cheek, tickling, their skins almost touching, but not quite.

"Why, to see ya again, o' course."

Her breasts were pressing against his back; she could almost feel his pain where the sword cut deeper. Softly, a trickle of blood started to run down his throat.

"Ah, never has your voice been so cold to me..." The sword bit harder. He lowly groaned as the pain intensified. The cut was not yet threatening, but meant to hurt. Still he grinned, but there was tension around his eyes.

How much she had longed to see him again... She could feel the movement of his torso as he breathed, pressed against him. Smelled his familiar smell, the fine silvery hair tickling her cheek. Her mouth so close to his, she sensed her breath quickening. For how long had she dreamed of embracing him, his body against hers so close? Finally it had come true – with a sword at his throat.

"What do you want here, traitor?" her voice had become softer, but the pain of his treason made it sharp and clear, like a polished sword ringing through the night air. "What does Aizen want of us?"

He turned his head a little, his first stirring since she had him, and the movement sent shivers over her skin. Her lips almost touched his cheek.

"Aizen doesn't know I'm here, Rangiku." His eyes, the one she could see at least, opened a slit and his grin grew wider.

A very, very quick movement, she pushed him forward into a spin, he grabbed for his sword, but got it only halfway out of its sheath, before he had a deep slash down his front, only slightly deflected at the end by his sword. Blood gushed out of the wound in a violent stream. He coughed and stumbled back, freeing his sword completely.

"Liar," she growled. She hated the desperate tone in her voice. She felt the beginning of a tremble, fought to keep it under control. "Tell me the truth," she commanded, but with her voice shaking, it sounded almost like a plea. She needed to believe him.

He coughed, just short of spitting blood. He doubled over, holding his left hand to his wound, in his right his sword. Straightening up, but not quite managing to, he tilted his head to grin at her. "You've become much stronger."

_...so that next time, I won't have to look at your retreating back when you leave ._She only barely could keep her hand from trembling._ ...so I won't have to return to the pieces of the people I care about... _Her throat closed, she couldn't trust herself to say anything. ..._so you won't leave me again and again and again. _She could either wait until her eyes got all teary, block her sight, make it unable for her to fight. Or she could wait for him to hug her, as she so often had, in vain while giving him the opportunity to kill her.

Or she could fight. Which would also probably kill her.

She couldn't afford to die, this close before the deciding fight. Soul Society relied on her, her Division relied on her, her former Captain relied on her. She couldn't let go, and just follow her own wishes.

"I promised something to myself." _I would get as strong as I needed, so that next time I could hold you back._Without a warning she charged at him.

The wound did barely slow him down. After a short exchange of blows, there was an opening – for both of them. She knew that if she hit now, she would bare herself to him. But it was worth it, if she could take him out with her.

She prepared for the critical hit. He did as well and as their swords approached, their eyes suddenly locked. He had his opened again, and there was no grin on his face. Somehow, in that instant, it made him look vulnerable. And she knew, despite what she knew of him, what she believed in and knew had to be done – she wouldn't kill him.

His sword stopped mere centimetres short of her throat, hers of his heart.

"You still..." he murmured, eyes not open anymore, but still not grinning.

_I still love you_. Her heart was racing, as she kept her gaze on his face, his silver glinting sword just at the lower rim of her field of vision. For a moment she saw everything so sharp and clear. His slim nose, the high cheekbones highlighted from the moon above, his upper lip; the rest of his face in the bluish shadows. His silvery hair glowing and fine like spider-silk. She suddenly seemed to perceive every strand of it moving in the barely noticeable cool breeze coming from the river. She almost felt her hand tingling with the feel of it.

"Why did you stop?" She kept her voice low and husky; she could barely hear it over the heartbeat drumming in her ears.

He slowly took the sword away from her throat; the only movement of his body was his arm.

"I could never hurt ya." He smiled as if trying to adopt an innocent mien.

Suddenly she couldn't hold back a laugh that sounded more like a bark. Her involuntary movement pushed the sword forward into the fabric of his coat.

"You don't really think cutting me with your sword could hurt any more?" she bit at him without fervour. Her tone equally sarcastic and teary made an awkward mixture.

She tried to collect herself, keep her voice steady. "You really aren't trying to escape your death."

"Never cared that much 'bout dying." He grinned, shrugging nonchalantly. "But I was actually hoping for something else, ya know."

All the fear, the longing. Fury grew in her chest. The mix of emotions balanced her, so that to the outside she could appear calm. She took the sword away.

"A welcome back?" Sarcasm came easier now. She stepped closer that only a few hand widths separated them.

"Like a kiss?" Grinning.

In response she leaned closer, until she could feel his breath on her face. After all these years, he still smelled the same. Their lips were almost touching. Then she knocked him unconscious with the hilt of her sword.

* * *

He woke up, his head buzzing. The wound on his chest hurting. Weak, exhausted, but definitely not dying. His was on the ground, his back propped against a tree.

She sat beside him. Not so close they were touching, but close enough.

"If you undertake anything endangering Soul Society, I will kill you." Her voice was low and close to his hear.

"That's not nice of ya to say, ya know..."

He listened to her breathing; saw her breasts gently moving up and down.

"I did expect to see you again, at the end..." she lowered her gaze and voice, "But not one week before."

"Then why are you here?" he asked, his left hands examining his wound.

"Patrol."

"Liar," he challenged her with a grin.

"Have I ever lied to you?"

"Have you ever told me all the truth?" The comment wasn't supposed to be more than banter.

There was a short pause, and he felt tension rising in her reiatsu.

"I love you..." she finally admitted under her breath..

Suddenly the night grew still around him. He could hear her whispering voice as clearly as if she were speaking loudly.

"I don't know if I can forgive you, any of it. But what's sure is that you can never come back."

He knew her well enough to hear what she wasn't saying. _You blew the one chance we had._

"We could hide together." His voice seemed easy, joking - not serious. He knew that she suspected he was.

"I can't leave. Now even less than two years ago." He more felt than saw her lips pressed together in determination, her distant gaze didn't waver. Despite what she may have appeared on the outside, he knew the subtle sentiments in her reiatsu and knew how much it cost her. But she didn't give up. The Rangiku from before would have looked at him with her sad gaze, knowing she couldn't do anything about him always going away.

"You really have become much stronger," he almost whispered. He was surprised at the softness of his own voice, tinted with many things, his ever conflicting emotions, admiration, misery, a kind of giving-up, or acceptance of a fight not really fought, a worst case he had already accepted, but also – a little bit of hope.

"I have." Her voice was soft, determined, and a little sad.

She stood up, brushed some dust and grass from her coat. He noticed her moving, her clothes brushing her skin, her figure not really hidden by them. He could imagine what she looked like underneath, tried not to. Her ample breasts accentuated by her pink shawl. Even her white Captains coat cut according to her style, emphasizing her figure.

"I must go," she told him. The hardness in her voice was only on the surface, not really able to hide the feeling which let it sound like, "I'm sorry."

She sensed his attempt at moving, a slight shift of his body and legs, despite his exhaustion and pain. He had done his best at pretending the wound wasn't as deep as it was while they were fighting.

Her voice stilled his movement.

"I can't. Not only because I have responsibility as a Captain. I won't. I have to make up for what you did, because I was never strong enough to hold you back."

She took a step forward, yet not really away from him.

"You won't even ask me?"

She stopped, and turned her head to look over her shoulder back at him. He suddenly forgot breathing. Her dark form, her eyes and hair shining in the moonlight, the strength of her sad gaze locking with his. For him.

He couldn't imagine anymore what he would answer his own question.

She shifted her weight, the coat caressing her body in a gentle rustle. If he only had the will to stand up.

"Would it change anything if I knew?" she sighed, melancholy in her purry voice. "All I ever wanted was for you to stay."

The answer surprised him. Especially his own reaction to it, the sudden relieve that tingled even in his toes.

It made him feel giddy, and a foolish grin bloomed on his face he couldn't suppress.

"If I came back only after Soul Society won over Aizen, it wouldn't count anything."

She was quiet for a few moments, then asked calmly. "You are so sure that Aizen will fall? Or is it because you don't care if you live or die?" Her question was serious, but the stupid grin wouldn't go away. Even his voice was cheerful, when he said. "You know me best, you should tell me."

"Idiot." She didn't really smile, but he heard the tenderness in her voice.

He watched her walk away, then a few flash-steps and she was gone.

He sunk back against the tree, all tension draining out of him, until only the solid wood in his back kept him upright. He quietly opened his eyes a slit, without a grin, feeling the moisture in them as he watched the path on which she had left.

When he remembered her last gaze at him he thought he wasn't simply gonna die after all, but he suddenly felt what he had felt in that moment long ago. When he had found her, starved; the look she gave him, when he gave her that dried tomato; when they walked out of the desert together. Only now he recognised the feeling from that time. It was trust.

* * *

**A/N:** It has taken me almost a year to come up with the time and a concrete idea for this chapter. 

Serania, unfortunately this was not in time for another Christmas present. Although I actually did start it before Christmas, I only had time to continue last week.  
I wonder if they were out of character sometimes. But even if, I wouldn't have done it differently. For this story, they are mine. (- Disclaimer ;-) )


End file.
